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    Review: ‘The Visitor’ Lags Behind the Times

    The new musical, based on the 2008 film and delayed by the pandemic, debuts at the Public Theater. But its story of a white professor helping immigrants feels out of step with the moment.What comes to mind when you think about immigration, ICE and deportation? I’m willing to bet more than a few George Washingtons that it’s not “musical.” Perhaps it is doable to respect the politics around these issues and the immigrants trying to build a life in the United States in this format, but it’s tough. Which is why the new musical “The Visitor” feels so obtuse and helplessly dated.Dated because it is based on Tom McCarthy’s 2008 film, a well-meaning artifact of the post-9/11 years about a couple of undocumented immigrants helping a white middle-aged professor get a new lease on life. The film resonated in a time before we had a president who fiercely fought to keep immigrants out, and before calls for diversity echoed throughout our institutions.In the film, an economics professor named Walter Vale travels to New York City from Connecticut to attend a conference, but while there, he finds a young couple living in his long-neglected apartment: Tarek, a drummer originally from Syria, and Zainab, a Senegalese jewelry designer. He lets them stay, and Tarek teaches him the drums. They live there until Tarek is unfairly picked up by the police for an infraction he didn’t commit and put in a detention center for being undocumented.The musical, which opened on Thursday at the Public Theater, is directed by Daniel Sullivan and has a book by Kwame Kwei-Armah and Brian Yorkey, who also wrote the lyrics. Tom Kitt (who also teamed up with Yorkey for the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Next to Normal”) adds music to this story, which arrives onstage with only minor changes.Long in the works, “The Visitor” was scheduled to begin its performances in March 2020 — practically a century ago in Pandemic Time. To stage the project now without a more significant overhaul of the story was a bold choice, especially with masking and quarantining coinciding with a reckoning about how people of color and their stories are — or, more often, are not — represented in theater and the arts.That’s not to say there haven’t been any modifications. First, previews were pushed back a week last month after cast members raised issues around depictions of race and representation. Then the departure of one of the leads, Ari’el Stachel, was announced in what the theater called “a mutual decision,” and last-minute edits were made in an attempt to refigure the way whiteness was centered in the production.David Hyde Pierce stars as Walter, a widower whose career and emotional life are as stagnant as a glass of lukewarm milk. Ahmad Maksoud, who was Stachel’s understudy, takes on the charming Tarek, and Alysha Deslorieux is the firm and guarded Zainab. Jacqueline Antaramian rounds out the central cast as Mouna, Tarek’s concerned mother.Alysha Deslorieux, left, as Zainab and Jacqueline Antaramian as Mouna in the 90-minute show.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesHyde Pierce delivers the most subdued version of his usual awkward nebbish with the occasional cantankerous quip. (“Wake up, you little snot rags,” he thinks while teaching his students in an early scene.) But there isn’t much setup for Walter; perhaps intentionally, given how much the show goes on to focus on its white protagonist.Part of it is Sullivan’s brusque direction, which speeds through some character-building dialogue then lingers on scenes that have the clunkiest exposition. And it’s also partly because of the congested score. While the film is quiet and pensive, the show is overstuffed — with seemingly every second of its 90 minutes filled with music.Kitt’s music has a generic pop sound that sometimes works, as in “Drum Circle,” a Disney-esque tune chock-full of lively, layered percussion; and “Heart in Your Hands,” a rather maudlin song with angelic harmonies. (Kitt’s score, particularly “Heart,” is further enlivened by Jessica Paz and Sun Hee Kil’s ethereal sound design.) But most of the time it doesn’t work; upbeat songs or soft, slowed-down percussion feel at odds with the heavy subject matter.This is especially baffling in the energetic “World Between Two Worlds” number, in which detained immigrants perform a “Stomp”-style stepping and clapping routine that abruptly ends when a guard takes one of them away. That said, at least the show moves; Lorin Latarro’s choreography animates even the most mundane scenes, say, in a classroom or on a New York City street. (The ensemble members enter and exit via doorways and a balcony platform in David Zinn’s confined set design of oppressively gray walls that transform into various spaces and institutions that may exclude individuals — an apt metaphor.)Yorkey’s clunky lyrics are what ultimately do the songs in; some are attempts to add introspection to a deeply withdrawn protagonist with a wooden disposition. So we’re treated to obvious lines like, “Here I am in a suit at this conference,” or clichés like, “Find the rhythm within,” and, “You join the [drum] circle and it joins you.”Hyde Pierce speak-sings his way through the score, or spastically works himself up into the bravado needed for the nauseatingly cheesy “Better Angels,” which is meant to be a triumphant showstopper. As Tarek, Maksoud gives an earnest performance but never seems to plumb any emotional depths — or vocal ones either. Deslorieux has the strongest voice of the main cast, crooning with delicate rolling r’s for her character’s accent. As Mouna, Antaramian’s voice is inconsistent, and she has a loose grasp on her character’s accent.Maksoud with ensemble members in the musical. The ensemble etches “small but remarkable performance moments, even in the background and during the fleeting transitional numbers,” our critic writes.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe ensemble, however, often upstages the main cast members, etching small but remarkable performance moments, even in the background and during the fleeting transitional numbers.In one, Katie Terza nearly blows off the walls of the Public with a brief yet transcendent Arabic song, and the professional drummer Takafumi Nikaido (also the production’s djembe coach) could easily steal the entire production.The few attempts at nuance — a comment from Walter showing how he’s also guilty of racial stereotypes, a mention of him as a white savior, and an added back story about Zainab’s abuse-ridden immigration journey — cannot change the story that’s being told or how uncomfortably it sits in our current moment. Even with the additions, the immigrant characters still ultimately function as markers of Walter’s emotional growth and development; they have bits of personality and back stories but can’t stand on their own in a plot without him.So what does one do with a work of art that, by the time of its premiere, has already been outpaced by the moment? How can you contemporize a work whose very conceit — its whole plot, its central perspective — will land like a well-meaning but ignorant cousin’s comment in a conscientious cultural conversation?These questions, of course, are larger than what the Public has on its stage right now. “The Visitor” proves that we can’t always pick up exactly where we left off. Sometimes that’s a good thing.The VisitorThrough Dec. 5 at the Public Theater, Manhattan; publictheater.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More

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    Theater to Stream: Lincoln Center Theater Joins the Fray

    Presentations include a star-studded reading of “The Thanksgiving Play,” musicals crossing the Atlantic and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.Theater has faced many battles in the past year, and one of them has been the hurdles in streaming archived productions online. Now, two major American institutions have joined the fray, and are sharing some of their stash.The first offering in Lincoln Center Theater’s Private Reels series is the Off Broadway production of Christopher Durang’s comedy “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,” which went on to win a Tony Award for its Broadway run. Led by David Hyde Pierce, Kristine Nielsen and Sigourney Weaver, the cast is firing on all cylinders and makes the most of Durang’s riff on Chekhov transplanted to Bucks County, Pa. March 18-April 11; lct.orgIn Chicago, the Goodman Theater’s archival streaming program, called Encore, kicks off with Christina Anderson’s “How to Catch Creation,” which toggles between decades as it looks at the elusive, fraught and, in this case, broadly defined creative process (through March 28). That will be followed by a stage adaptation of Juan Rulfo’s magical-realist novel “Pedro Páramo” by the playwright Raquel Carrió and the director Flora Lauten, of the Cuban company Teatro Buendía. March 29-April 11; goodmantheatre.org‘The Thanksgiving Play’Dream cast alert! As part of the Spotlight on Plays series, Keanu Reeves, Heidi Schreck, Bobby Cannavale and Alia Shawkat have signed up for a livestreamed reading of Larissa FastHorse’s satire, in which a well-meaning drama teacher decides to put on a culturally sensitive Thanksgiving pageant — except she can’t seem to find any Native Americans to participate. March 25-29; broadwaysbestshows.comDerbhle Crotty, left, and Garrett Lombard in the Druid Theater Company’s production of “The Cherry Orchard.”Photo credit: Robbie Jack, via Druid TheaterClassics RevisitedThe Irish director Garry Hynes is particularly at ease with quietly insightful productions of classics. Her take on “The Cherry Orchard,” for the Druid Theater Company in Galway, Ireland, and adapted by the playwright Tom Murphy, is boosted by a sterling company that includes Derbhle Crotty as Madame Ranevskaya. It’s part of Culture Ireland’s online festival. March 19-21; druid.ieAnother formidable European actor is Hans Kesting, a regular in productions by Ivo van Hove. Thanks to the Internationaal Theater Amsterdam’s putting some of its shows online, we can watch him as the title character in Robert Icke’s take on “Oedipus” — here a 21st-century politician on election night. In Dutch with subtitles. March 21; ita.nl.enFrom left, Kevin Anderson, Eden Espinosa and Ramona Keller in “Brooklyn the Musical” on Broadway.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAmerican Musicals Across the AtlanticSome of us remember the olden days of 2004, when Mark Schoenfeld and Barri McPherson’s “BKLYN the Musical” was known as “Brooklyn the Musical” during its Broadway run. Does everything need a cool abbreviation? NVM. Still, it’s hard not to root for a show that ends in a sing-off pitting someone named Brooklyn (Emma Kingston) against someone named Paradice (Marisha Wallace). This new production was recorded in London. March 22-April 4; stream.theatreIn a completely different vein, the staging of John Caird and Paul Gordon’s lovely musical “Daddy Long Legs” by Boulevard Productions is now streaming, and it’s a low-key charmer. The story is told in letters between an orphan (Roisin Sullivan) and her benefactor (Eoin Cannon), and it’s a testament to Gordon’s catchy score (just try getting “Like Other Girls” out of your head) that this potentially stilted format actually works. Through March 21; stream.theatre‘Protec/Attac’A few years ago, Julia Mounsey and Peter Mills Weiss created waves with their brilliant and deeply unsettling “[50/50] old school animation.” So expectations are high for the duo’s new piece, “Protec/Attac,” which is getting a developmental stream as part of a mini-festival of four new works presented on consecutive evenings by the experiment-happy Brick Theater in Brooklyn. From March 26; bricktheater.com‘Gutenberg! The Musical!’Before writing the book for the musical adaptation of “Beetlejuice,” Scott Brown and Anthony King created this very wacky and very funny musical about two writers who perform their show about the inventor of the printing press in a backers’ audition. Now, Bobby Conte Thornton and Alex Prakken take on this rollicking goofball comedy in a benefit for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. March 18-21; broadwaycares.orgFrom left, Elizabeth Chinn Molloy, A.J. Baldwin and Nathan Tubbs in “Theater: A Love Story.”via The Know Theater‘Theater: A Love Story’Know Theater in Cincinnati did not take the easy way with a new effort from the playwright Caridad Svich, which interrogates the nature of theater and what makes a play a play. Theater about theater can get precious and self-congratulatory, but this show, which mixes drama and movement, avoids that trap. While it is admittedly a little long, the production rewards attention. Through March 27; knowtheatre.comStephen Michael Spencer, center, in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s production of “Julius Caesar.”Jenny Graham, via Oregon Shakespeare FestivalOregon Shakespeare FestivalThis beloved company in Ashland, Ore., has kept busy during the past year with streams that currently include its 2017 production of “Julius Caesar” (through March 27). But it is also a longtime champion of new American plays, such as Mary Kathryn Nagle’s “Manahatta,” a drama that juxtaposes the cutthroat world of New York City finance in the 21st century with the Dutch acquisition (to put it politely) of Manhattan from the Lenape nation 400 years earlier. March 29-April 24; osfashland.orgWomen’s Solo TurnsFrank Kuhn’s play “Let It Shine: A Visit with Fannie Lou Hamer,” about the Mississippi voting rights activist, is straightforward and educational — and that is its strength. Sharon Miles stars in this production from the New Stage Theater in Jackson, Miss., and it’s easy to see how Hamer paved the way for the likes of Stacey Abrams in Georgia. Through March 21; newstagetheatre.comThe tone is lighter in two solo comedies from Latinas, courtesy of the IAMA Theater Company in Los Angeles. Sheila Carrasco portrays a gallery of characters in “Anyone But Me,” while Anna LaMadrid’s “The Oxy Complex” checks in on a certain Viviana during a pandemic that just keeps going and going. (The title refers to oxytocin, a hormone released during childbirth, so there might be hope.) March 21-April 18; iamatheatre.com More